Pill holding bottles have been used for many years. The caps or closures of these bottles are attached to the bottle by many means, among which is threads.
It is desirable to have an indicator on the cap, or shoulder of the bottle that is for the purpose of indicating if a pill taker has taken or not taken a pill or pills, or tablets, or capsules, etc.
The indicator may indicate many pill takings, or only one pill taking.
The indicator may be adapted to any type of cap or bottle, the only requirement is that the indicator is movable to a new position, and that it is detented by some means to any position that it is moved from or to.
The indicator may conceal an indication from view, or alternatively expose the indication to view.
The desirability of having an indicator for pill bottles appears to be real. A special non-pill bottle package for birth control pills is in effect-an entire package which is an indicator, having a dose in each compartment of the indicator package. This birth control pill package is constructed as one large indicator.
Once the idea of how this indicator might be included at a cost consistent with the cost of packaging pills in bottles, then the approaches that are to be found in the figures in the disclosures become apparent.
There are no indicators added to pill bottle caps, or bottles for that matter, in production today, in spite of pill bottles and caps being in use for years. The need and market acceptability has existed for many years, so the conclusion must be that no one in that business has found a way to include an indicator at a cost which would be "digested" by the marketplace.
In operation one takes a pill, etc., moves the indicator to a position that corresponds (for that person) to having taken that pill, etc., and the indicator acts as a reminder that, that particular pill, etc., has been taken.
At the simplest, one can include an indicator with only one additional inexpensive part that snaps into, or onto, a part that is already needed and has been altered to accept this part.